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Man I wanted to come in here and talk about Rogue One but instead everybody's whining over TFA again.

Okay, back to Rouge One...

So, has anyone read the movie novelization (not Catalyst but the actual movie novel)? It was written by Alexander Freed, who also wrote Battlefront: Twilight Company which was a damned enjoyable read. And he is definitely a good fit for what is essentially the same kind of story: a war movie set in Star Wars.

This article has some good excerpts. And calls to attention a bit of fridge horror: remember that kid Jyn risked her life to save on Jedha? Yeah, she kinda died when the Death Star blasted the city...

Galvatron wrote:Okay, back to Rouge One...

I mean, that fan backlash thread about Rogue One has also been taken over by TFA whining. It's like...give it a fucking rest, people.

Of course that kid died. Man, EVERYONE in the movie died. Except that fugly guy with the Aqualish.

I guess the point was to show Jyn performing an unambiguously heroic act, even if the kid wound up dead anyway.

Dash Rendar saved them.

She took shelter within Dash Rendar's shoulderpads.

I bet they are actually two halves of the Outrider but just deflated. Like those capsule-compressed vehicles in Dragon Ball. Or Pokeballs.

Dash Rendar will always just be a 90's Cable without 80 guns slung about him.

Okay, so Death Star question: When we see the one-reactor shots kicking up seemingly an entire continent of crust, does that mean the Death Star's superlaser really is just a huge, kinetic, brute force kinda thing? If it was an actual laser, wouldn't its effects have no kinetic effects, just a hell of a lot of fire/boiling/melting?

You mean like how blasters and turbolasers are totally not like lasers?

NeoGoomba wrote:Dash Rendar will always just be a 90's Cable without 80 guns slung about him.

Okay, so Death Star question: When we see the one-reactor shots kicking up seemingly an entire continent of crust, does that mean the Death Star's superlaser really is just a huge, kinetic, brute force kinda thing? If it was an actual laser, wouldn't its effects have no kinetic effects, just a hell of a lot of fire/boiling/melting?

I'm curious about this too. When you see the beam lance down at Jedha, you briefly (frame or two) see a blinding wall of fire like a huge explosion, then the next shots are of the debris cloud and magma flying up with a sizeable shockwave and the crust lifting up like a wave. This continues to propagate and fall back to earth by the time it reaches Saw's base and the U-wing. It reaches up to orbit in the final shots from ground zero.

When they hit Scarif, it looks more like the Castle Bravo H-bomb test: massive plasma fireball and ring clouds with a shockwave. No hint of the crust being penetrated and shifted. Possible down to the angle of the strike? Jedha was hit with the DS more of less around 60° or so. Scarif impact seems at a shallower angle.

Didn't the Scarif shot impact on the ocean? Maybe that had an effect as well, since instead of punching through rock you're flash-boiling billions of tonnes of water for a lovely steam cloud.

Most of Scarif, if items anything like the atolls it's filmed at, will be shallows it seems. It could be it was deep ocean where the impact was, but that was tens of kilometres away at least. Where the citadel was it didn't seem to be particularly deep at all.

NeoGoomba wrote:Dash Rendar will always just be a 90's Cable without 80 guns slung about him.

Okay, so Death Star question: When we see the one-reactor shots kicking up seemingly an entire continent of crust, does that mean the Death Star's superlaser really is just a huge, kinetic, brute force kinda thing? If it was an actual laser, wouldn't its effects have no kinetic effects, just a hell of a lot of fire/boiling/melting?

oh god, none of the "lasers" in Star Wars are LASERS.

They're "Laser Blasters". They were called Lasers in ANH because George Lucas doesn't care - the audience doesn't care. No one cares. It's obviously Space Lasers. Space Lasers can do anything.

They're clearly plasma bolts or something similar. Just like how a light sabre is "just like a laser sword" - no it isn't. It's clearly not a "LASER sword". That's a laser-pen. We have those. They don't work like Light Sabres. Light Sabres aren't made of light lol. It's just a name.

Like "Light Speed!" in Star Wars. Obviously it's not literally The Speed of Light, that's daft.



Just as "The Death Star's Laser" is not a ... flippin ... laser. The clue would be in the fact we can see it, we can see "pulses" going through it and the fact it takes 8 lasers to meet in space, then stop for a second, charge a ball, then shoot out a crazy giant laser bigger than all the 8 lasers combined, in a direction that nothing is emitting or reflecting in.

Obviously it's not a LASER :p


Yes it's a Direct Energy Weapon. A LASER that was Sufficiently Powerful would just bore straight through the planet.

the way SW "laser" weaponary functions seems to be somewhere between a true laser and a kinectic impactor, they're penetrive as true lasers but functions like massless beams at times as well.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:
Snip hyperbolic reactions.

Okay dude, breathe. My question was how the superlaser works in general, not that it's a broken laser. First I wondered if it acted as a kinetic kill beam, then pointed out that it doesn't work as a laser. My question still remains the same: how the hell the superlaser causes its destruction? There were "chain-reaction" arguments in the past, and all kinds of other esoteric explanations and theories. I'm asking just what the hell it actually does, because I follow zero EU material nowadays, I wondered if novelizations have covered it.

NeoGoomba wrote:

Prometheus Unbound wrote:
Snip hyperbolic reactions.

Okay dude, breathe.

? I'm not worked up in the least, that's just how I post

My question was how the superlaser works in general, not that it's a broken laser. First I wondered if it acted as a kinetic kill beam, then pointed out that it doesn't work as a laser.

That's cos it's not a LASER.

btw are you taking my typing in caps for LASER and stuff as shouting / emphasis? If so I can see the "breathe" bit.

It's it's official name, LASER is an acronym. "Laser" isn't really word but that's besides the point, I'm just saying that's not me shouting at all

My question still remains the same: how the hell the superlaser causes its destruction? There were "chain-reaction" arguments in the past, and all kinds of other esoteric explanations and theories. I'm asking just what the hell it actually does, because I follow zero EU material nowadays, I wondered if novelizations have covered it.

It's not a chain reaction - Aldaaran blew up in like half a second - a chemical or physical properties change couldn't cross the planet that fast. The Death Star literally just throws energy in a very focused beam at a thing, and that thing explodes. To "mass scatter" a planet like Aldaaran (break its component pieces apart so much its own gravity can't stop it), assuming it was Earth like, is something like 2x 10^32 joules. Which is a heck of a lot. It's star-like power levels. As in channeling the power of an entire star into a beam, directed at a target.

It's a magic Space Laser; there's nothing in real life physics that can equate to it nor explain how or what it does.

As for what it is in-universe, http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Superlaser knock yourself out It describes it as a Laser Weapon.

It defines a Laser Weapon as:

A laser was a beam of focused energy operating under the same principles as blaster weaponry. Energy-rich gas would be converted to a glowing particle beam that could melt through targets.[1] Throughout the galaxy, it was most often employed in the form of the laser cannon weapon.[2] The primary weapon of the Death Star was an exceedingly powerful superlaser capable of obliterating entire planets.[3]

So there you go, it's a giant plasma bolt.

As for what powers it, it is "hypermatter" which is scifi talk for "magic".

"Hypermatter was an exotic form of particles used in the hypermatter annihilators of starships and immense battle stations. Its unusual properties allowed vessels to produce the phenomenal amounts of energy necessary for their operation."




The Death Star Laser is a giant Space Laser that can blow up planets with magic - it may as well say that.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:
btw are you taking my typing in caps for LASER and stuff as shouting / emphasis? If so I can see the "breathe" bit.

It's it's official name, LASER is an acronym. "Laser" isn't really word but that's besides the point, I'm just saying that's not me shouting at all

Hah I was, my bad.

Prometheus Unbound wrote: The Death Star Laser is a giant Space Laser that can blow up planets with magic - it may as well say that.

I shall fully accept this answer forthwith!

SW lasers are as much a LASER as their blaster rifles have rifling in the barrels. They are colloquialisms and not technical descriptions.

Knife wrote:SW lasers are as much a LASER as their blaster rifles have rifling in the barrels. They are colloquialisms and not technical descriptions.

That's a good way of putting it

Has it ever been addressed as to why people still call them lasers though, or even laser blasters? The same for "light speed" ? I ask because I've played some of those old KOTR games and I understand the SW galaxy goes back 25,000 years or something with hyperdrive and blasters (or equivalents).

I know the term is around as a "colloquialism" but does that even make sense, objectively? Wouldn't the similarity between an actual LASER and a "laser blaster" have been made .... like... well, over 25,000 years ago? And they still call it a laser? heh. Just seems names would change in that time, especially considering a multispecies galaxy.

Same for light speed. It must be 50,000 years since the first discovery of FTL speed. Why do they still call it that? They've not had "light" as a barrier in a thousand generations.

I imagine that the etymology of words in a galactic culture spanning scores of millennia and thousands of intelligent species with their own various languages and dialects can be somewhat complicated.

I mean obviously we can't compare any real language the the Galactic Basic as presumably the Basic is around for tens of thousands of years, but in modern languages there are many words which are disconnected from their ethymological roots.

Port and starboard are still around despitre the rudder making this clasification obsolete back in the Middle Ages, eavesdropping don't necessairrly require you to be near any eaves, you don't use a torch if you want to torch something, qauarantine doesn't have to last 40 days, and we know that most disasters have as much to do with the stars as lunacy with the moon.

(I'm sure a native speaker will find better examples)

The same way when the laser guns were replaced with plasma or whatever the term just stuck.

I'd like to point out that while I'm not a native speaker blood plasma is probably not ionized gas, just guessing

"Ionized gas of charged particles" is the second definition. I think blood was known before the 4th state of matter....

But as to blasters, while we don't know for sure, there is the implication that something ignites/heats the plasma-to-be, may as well be a laser. Or have been a laser. Whatever.

Aren't they speaking some unfathomable language called Galactic Basic too, and not English?
Sort of how in The Hunt for Red October, Captain Ramius is supposed to really be speaking Russian, but we the audience hear it as Scottish-accented English?

So they may not even be saying "laser", nor would the Galactic Basic words for "light", "amplification," "stimulated", "emission" and "radiation" even end up with the first letters (or starting syllables) that sound like lay-ser.

Perhaps the autotranslation that splortchifies the speech audio into English just picked the word "laser" cos it's the closest translation we have.

Lord Revan wrote:I'd like to point out that while I'm not a native speaker blood plasma is probably not ionized gas, just guessing

Not unless something has gone very, very wrong!